Sunday, December 7, 2014

What Shall I Cry? (A homily for Advent, Isaiah 40:1-11)

Advent(Second Sunday, Year B)

Isaiah 40:1-11

2 Peter 3:8-15a, 18

Mark 1:1-8

In the 14th year of Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib
the king of Assyria waged war against the cities of Judah—including Jerusalem.
But Hezekiah, king of Judah, was not willing to surrender to the Assyrians. So
Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, sent his ambassador—the Rabshakeh—along with
a huge army to Jerusalem to intimidate Hezekiah, and to persuade the people of
God to think differently about their situation.

Once the Rabshakeh arrived outside the gates of Jerusalem,
Isaiah tells us that he addressed the people Israel with a loud voice,
informing them that their surrounding cities had been laid to waste, and that
their city was next, unless, of course, they surrendered peacefully. And if
they were to surrender peacefully, not only would they not be destroyed, but the King of Assyria would give each of them their own
fig tree and vine from which to eat and their own cistern from which to drink. By making an agreement with the King of Assyria, they would no longer need to worry about their warfare, for they would receive care by the hand of a good shepherd who leads his sheep to a new land of promise, “a land of grain and new wine, a land
of bread and vineyards” much like their own (36:10-17).

King Hezekiah had a decision to make. He and his people
could surrender to the Assyrians, or they could repent before the Lord, ask for
His help, and hope that the Lord would answer favorably according to their
prayers.

Hezekiah made the wise decision and he went into the Temple
and prayed. That night the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, and Isaiah let King
Hezekiah know that the Lord heard His prayer and was pleased with it. And in
response to his prayer, the Lord promised to end the war of the Assyrians
against them. That night the angel of the Lord would pass over Jerusalem and
plague the Assyrian armies, causing many to die and the rest to flee away from
the city.

Jerusalem was then spared. Her warfare had ended. The Lord
delivered His people once more from their enemies. Now it was time to celebrate
the Lord’s victory.

All of these events I just described are recorded in the
book of Isaiah, chapter 36-37, only a few chapters prior to our reading in
Isaiah 40. And if you were to gloss over chapters 38 and 39, at first glance the message of Isaiah 40
seems to be describing that victorious event (i.e. that event of Jerusalem’s
deliverance from Assyria). Consider how Isaiah 40 begins:

Comfort, comfort my people!says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her in iniquity is pardoned…(vv. 1-2)

Here the Lord declares that His people ought to be comforted
by His good news, and His good news is this: her warfare has ended, and the Lord has pardoned her iniquity. That
sounds like a reference to the warfare which ended in the previous story about
the King of Assyria attacking Jerusalem.

Then Isaiah hears another voice crying out:

Clear
the way for the Lord in the wilderness!

Make
smooth in the desert a highway for our God!

…Then
the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together;

For the
mouth of the Lord has spoken. (vv. 3-5)

Get yourself
up on a high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news!

Lift
up your voice mightily, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news! Lift it up, do not fear.

Say to
the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” (v. 9)

Because Israel’s warfare is over, now the time has come to
prepare a path for a procession of the Lord to His throne. The imagery of
paving a highway for God through the
wilderness is reminiscent of Israel’s exodus from bondage in Egypt, when
God first claimed Himself as Israel’s King and carried them into the promised
land. In chapters 36 & 37, we found a “Passover” theme: The people were in bondage and the angel of the Lord passed over His people, striking down all of Israel's enemies. Here in chapter 40, we find a clear “Exodus” theme. Here we see God leading His
people in a victorious procession through the wilderness and into the promised
land.

However, as I said a few moments ago, if you were to read Isaiah 36-37 and then gloss over chapters
38-39, Isaiah 40 seems to be describing that victorious event mentioned in 36-37. But Isaiah
is not actually talking about Israel’s deliverance from the King of Assyria.
And we know this because of chapters 38-39. In those chapters, Isaiah tells
us a strange little story that doesn’t appear to be very important until we
connect it with the message of chapter 40.

In chapters 38-39 Isaiah tells us that King Hezekiah
became very sick and when the king of Babylon heard he was sick, he visited him
and brought him lots of gifts; and Hezekiah not only accepted his gifts, he
expressed his gratitude to the King of Babylon by giving him a tour through all
of Jerusalem and even inside the Lord’s Temple, showing him all his treasures
(Isa. 39). That action of Hezekiah provoked the Lord, and so the Lord sent Isaiah to give an
important message to Hezekiah:

Behold,
the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your
fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing
shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons, who will come from
you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in
the palace of the king of Babylon. (39:5-7)

And take special notice of Hezekiah’s following response as well (39:8). Then Hezekiah
responded to Isaiah saying,

“The
word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.” (For he thought, ‘There will be
peace and security in my days.’)

This rise and fall of King Hezekiah, and God’s promise to
send his people into exile in Babylon, is the background of our reading today
from Isaiah (40:1-11). If we were to skip over Isaiah’s brief mention of Hezekiah’s
sickness (Isa. 39), we would be missing out on the fact that this great promise
of comfort was not supposed to be fulfilled in the days of Hezekiah, even though many people of Israel probably thought it was. Isaiah's proclamation of God's promise was for a future
generation, long after the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel's exile to Babylon.

Even Isaiah seems to have believed God’s word of comfort was
too good to be true. He hears a voice telling him to cry out God’s good news,
but he doesn’t know if God’s message really is good news for his generation. “What shall I cry out?” Isaiah asks, for “all
flesh is grass and all of its loyalty is like a flower of the field.” Isaiah
knows that the people of Israel in his generation were not loyal to God.
“Surely the people are grass,” Isaiah says. And just as surely as the people
are grass who will fade away by the breath of the Lord,so shall the word of the Lord stand firm. The
days were coming when Jerusalem and the glories of its Temple would be carried away to Babylon, and
nothing would be left; all would be destroyed, and the people of Israel would be taken captive to Babylon too.

Now, at this point you might be wondering what all of this
has to do with Advent.

Advent is a season
when we—people of God—are called to wait upon the Lord to enter our lives
again. And as we wait up Him we’re supposed to be preparing ourselves for His
coming by repenting of our sins and by meditating upon His promises.

But what has God
promised for us? What has God promised that we need to be preparing ourselves
to receive?

Perhaps it’s best to
answer those questions by imagining ourselves as the people of God in Isaiah’s
day. Are we that much different than them? Are the people of God today much
different than the flowers of the field in Isaiah’s day? When the Lord
speaks to us—His people—addressing our foolishness directly, just as He did
with His people in Isaiah's day, what is our response? Even when Hezekiah
received a warning from the Lord directly, all he seemed to care about was
peace and security while he was alive. Are our ways of thinking
much different than Hezekiah's? Are we willing to sacrifice our time,
energy,and petty inconveniences to
ensure greater peace and security for the next generation, or do we care more
about having peace and security in our own lifetime at the expense of future generations?

When we want God to
come to our rescue, of course then we pray fervently to Him, and we
teach our children to pray too. When
we need rescuing, then we wait attentively for Him to respond
favorably to our prayers; but let's be honest: when God graciously delivers us
from our sins, our tendency is to go right back to where we were before, to our
old foolish ways. And to make matters worse, sometimes we don’t even
seem to care much about what happens to the next generation because of our
foolish sins. We care far more about what happens to us. We care far
more about having peace and security in our lives, even if that means a
future generation of God’s people would suffer from our foolish decisions
today.

So what message should
we be crying out? What message should we be crying out in a generation like
ours, whose loyalty is like a flower of the field that fades away with every
gust of wind?

The answer to that question
comes from our Gospel reading today (Mark 1:1-8). John the Baptist referred to
this prophecy of Isaiah as confirming his ministry of baptism, which means that
Isaiah’s message of hope was fulfilled in the coming of Jesus and in John’s
baptism of Jesus. Jesus was the one of Isaiah’s prophecy for whom a highway was
to be cleared, and John’s baptism was the way that highway to Jesus was paved.
Jesus was the one for whom even the mountains of Johns world were to make room.
Jesus was the one whom the people of Israel needed to repent before and receive
forgiveness. Jesus was the Word of comfort for Israel.

But Jesus wasn’t
simply the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. Jesus was and is the
glory of God revealed for all “flesh” to see (Isa. 40:5), therefore Jesus is
the one for whom even the mountains of our world need to make room. Our world
has mountains of pride, valleys of despair, crooked places of perversion, rough
places of bitterness, but Jesus comes as our Word of comfort and paves a
highway for us. He is the one who pays the penalty for our iniquity and
delivers us from exile. His body, into which we have been baptized, is the
Temple he destroyed and raised to life again. Jesus is the name above all names
that we lift up without fear before the world, saying “Behold your God!”

Jesus is also the one
who makes good on his promises as the King of kings. Jesus is the one who rules
over all nations and subdues our enemies under His feet, declaring and end to
our warfare. Jesus is the one who calls us to lay down our carnal weapons of
warfare and surrender to His rule; and by surrendering to Him, he promises to
fulfill His word as our good Shepherd, leading us to rest in his good land, a
land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

And as we learned in
our Epistle reading for today (2 Peter. 3:8-15a, 18), Jesus is not slow to
fulfill this promise to us either. Rather, he is patient toward us, not wishing
that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Therefore, this is the
message we ought to be proclaiming: Come to Jesus for your warfare to
end and your iniquity to be pardoned. Repent and be baptized for the
forgiveness of your sins. Confess your sins and surrender yourself unto God,
then accept His invitation to feast on the grain and vineyards of His good
land. Feast on the bread and wine which your King has prepared for you this day
at His Table, so that you may grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ.

* * * * * *

Heavenly Father, stir up your power, and with great might come among
us; and, because we are greatly hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace
and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with
you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.